No creatures.
Farrengalli, naked, sweating, and grunting, toiling over the struggling, whimpering and equally naked Dove.
Raintree gave a war whoop and went for the kill.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Red.
The river running red, cliffs on fire, sky filled with flickering orange.
Trumpets and screams, lava gouging a rut deep into the Earth, hot electricity sparking in the air.
Ace’s belly boiled, his head clanged with the din of Armageddon. This was Revelation’s promise made good, the seventh seal broken, the whore of Babylon rising.
The intensity of the vision sliced at him like knives at an altar, torturing a sacrificial lamb in anger over its innocence.
God was delivering. He that sat on high was dishing it out big-time.
And Ace, His servant, His vessel, His holy antenna on the mortal plane, could only accept and endure, and let the message pass through him. Coarse sand clung to his lips as he spewed forth words in a thousand lost languages. He didn’t know what they meant, and he didn’t care. He couldn’t crawl away from the thundering liquid blaze behind him. All he could do was wait for the storm to pass, or to engulf and swallow him, as God saw fit. And, oh, the red raw glory of Rapture. Praise be to Jesus, our Father who art in heaven, who laid me down by still waters, in sickness and in health “Get up.”
Ace’s tongue pressed against his jagged teeth. Blood. He’d bitten his lip.
Ace lifted his head. Red had gone to dark, though tiny streaks of lightning cracked the edges of the black shell above. The river was no longer in flames. It churned and whispered and hissed, a snake without end, sliding over the world in search of the hole that led to Hell.
“Get up.”
This wasn’t God’s voice. God had a deep, cruel, demanding voice-almost like that of his real father, the mortal man who had shot angry jism into a throwaway slut three decades before. God wasn’t talking to Ace. Not at the moment, but he’d told Ace plenty enough already.
Ace blinked. I’ve gone blind. The lion tore out my eyes.
He rose to his knees, running a gritty hand over his cheeks. Blood. Goddamned blood. He wiped, blinked again, hung between panic and surrender.
Then he saw that it was night, and he remembered the gorge, the raft, and the angels. Clara. And his baby in her belly.
And Bowie, who held Ace’s pistol. “Get up,” Bowie said a third time.
“They took her,” Ace said.
“They took other people, too. Some of them because of you.”
“You don’t know.” Ace stood, his knees weak and wobbly. “You don’t know what they’re going to do. But I saw it.”
“I saw it, too. She’s dead by now.”
“No, she’s not dead. I tell you, I saw it.” For just a moment, Bowie’s silhouette rippled and transformed, became tall and brick red, scaly, eyes smoldering with the moon’s dead and buried light.
“Doesn’t matter anymore. You didn’t kill me, and I don’t really feel like killing you.”
“They took her to the cave. Lots of bones there. Put her on the rock.”
“The rock?”
“The Changing Rock.”
“You can tell the forensic psychologist all about it when you stand trial.”
Ace laughed, from so deep in his gut that it hurt. “You think you can arrest me? Like God cares about this cops-and-robbers horseshit? There’s only one law and one order and it don’t matter shit for you and what you want.”
“Right now, I have the gun, so I’m the law.” Bowie, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the river, his head held erect and his glare fixed on Ace like the mean teacher he’d had in sixth grade. Even in the bad light, there was no mistaking those eyes.
Jesus, the fucker means business. Forgive him, for he knows not what the hell he doeth, but the river-rat bastard is dead serious.
“They’re going to put her on the Changing Rock. They’re going to take my baby. Make it one of them.”
“They’re animals. Vicious, cunning animals. Call them what you want, make up some comic-book legend, it doesn’t change anything.”
“We got to hurry,” Ace said. He began walking away from the gun, and then broke into a crippled jog.
“Stop or I’ll shoot, you son of a bitch,” Bowie shouted behind him. “God knows, I’ve earned the right.”
“Go ahead,” Ace shouted back. “You can’t kill me. You can only make me deader.”
He ran along the river, knees and lungs on fire, blood sweet in his mouth. God had showed him where to go. God didn’t show the whole picture, because it had never been that way. Part of the mystery and beauty of the visions was that God gave him a few pieces to the puzzle and Ace had to sort out the rest. He only wished it didn’t make his head hurt so fucking much.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Farrengalli was close to coming when he heard the vampire-fucker’s shriek.
He’d worked hard for the orgasm, and as it approached, he’d finally forgotten that he might get clawed, bitten, and bagged for a trophy at any moment. Except the hot little babe’s fingernails had done a number on his bare back. When she’d first called to him from the makeshift bed, he’d thought she was teasing him, doing some kind of dyke dance or playing a melodramatic mind game. And when she’d whispered, “Do me,” like an order, well, he’d still needed some convincing. It had taken fifteen seconds to prove she was no dyke, and another fifteen to show both her sincerity and her talents. It wasn’t easy to get the Big Boy Boomeroo up when fear was doing a shrivel number, but she worked hard to set the engorging blood in motion.
And once the big boy got rolling, it liked to finish the ride. It was only fucking natural.
But even the Boomeroo couldn’t withstand the effects of a balls-clenching shriek from the throat of a bloodsucking animal. And the monster had come out of nowhere, because the sky over the gorge had been quiet, only the occasional red wink of a distant jet to mar the clouds, stars, and smudge of moon.
Farrengalli barely had time to withdraw the Boomeroo from its warm, wet, welcoming sheath when the creature struck him, flying sideways to ram into his shoulder. As Farrengalli was knocked across the rocky terrain, the slow-motion tumble knocked some thoughts together:
… Dove had either come a half-dozen times or else she was the Meryl Streep of faking orgasm…
… the Boomeroo was flopping like a bobble-head doll, right out in the open where the creature could rip it away like a monkey plucking a banana…
… the creature had attacked not from the sky, but from the rear of the cave…
… meaning the fucking redskin had let them down, not covered their asses, sold them down the river…
Then he was rolling away from the mangling grip of the beast, trying to get up and run, hoping it would attack Dove instead, but it tackled him around the ankles, and this one was huge, not chimp-sized like the others. And the son of a bitch was strong.
“You goddamned rapist!” the creature yelled, and Farrengalli elbowed the thing in the head before the words registered.
The redskin.
Gone off the deep end. Grinding his shoulder into Farrengalli’s gut, lifting him and slamming him onto his back. Raintree did some kind of homo wrestling move, then had Farrengalli pinned on his belly, his arms tucked under Farrengalli’s armpits, hands locked behind Farrengalli’s skull, applying enough pressure to nearly snap his neck.
Farrengalli tried to roll away, but the man knew his stuff. Farrengalli’s knees were scraped and raw, and he couldn’t twist free. He remembered something he’d seen on World Wrestling Federation broadcasts, and though the matches were staged, the violent intent seemed real enough. Farrengalli jerked his head back hard, smashing it into the broad cartilage of Raintree’s nose. The full-nelson headlock loosened, and Farrengalli drove backward with his elbow again, causing the breath to whooosh out of his opponent. Twisting, he managed to work a knee into the Cherokee’s crotch.